By JOSEPH SIML
Everyone dreads WRT 101 and 102, but what’s so difficult? It’s just a few papers and some research, right? We shouldn’t be afraid of a little work.
For me, the hardest part of writing isn’t researching, learning MLA or even writing the paper. It’s staying focused.
Distractions are everywhere. From our phones to our friends and even YouTube, finding ways to delay work and procrastinate have never been easier.
The good news is that there are ways to overcome a procrastination addiction.
Over the course of my writing classes, I found some techniques for staying focused. These techniques will help maximize your writing productivity, so you can get back to other exciting challenges … like your chemistry homework.
1. Get out of your house. Home is one of the worst places to get work done. This is especially true for any student who has a large family (like me) or has a lot of roommates.
This also goes for the student who likes to hang out with a large group of friends. You can’t study and socialize at the same time. The distractions never end, but the time you have for your paper does.
2. Turn off the Internet. If you want to save a lot of it, turn off the Internet. It can be done in as little as two clicks, and it will work wonders for your paper. The Internet is your No. 1 enemy when it comes to achieving anything productive.
It is so easy, after a long day at school, to go online “just for a few minutes” because “I deserve it.”
Needless to say, those few minutes often turn into hours. Worse still, all that surfing often takes you out of your work mindset, making it harder to get anything done afterward.
3. Keep writing. My final tip has to do with how to write the paper itself. If you find yourself struggling over the next paragraph, unsure of what to say next, don’t stop writing. You can’t edit you paper if there are no words to edit.
Sure, what you write may not be perfect, but anything is better than nothing. If you have followed these tips so far, you’ll be in a distraction-free environment. Consequently, it will be easier to figure out what to write next.
You could write your next paper far faster if you work in the library, without a phone, disconnected from the Internet and work by yourself.
If you think that advice sounds nerd-like, you’re still using the high school term. In college, we call these people successful. Or doctors, whatever you prefer.